August 20, 2016

A Visual of Fascia and Fascial Compartments

Last night when I was cooking lamb shanks (lower leg of lamb) for dinner, I saw it was photo-worthy. Not as food photography, but as a clear image of how the body arranges fascia like ziplock bags within ziplock bags.

Fascia is what Rolfers™ work with. Most massage is dealing with the muscles, but Rolfing® Structural Integration is organizing the fascial network of the body for improved posture (alignment in gravity), greater range of motion, and improved biomechanics (efficient movement). I tell clients that fascia is around every muscle, then there's another layer of fascia around the muscles of a particular group as a whole, then another layer around a whole body segment. Using the thigh as an example, each hamstring would have its own fascial wrapping, then the hamstrings as a group would have a fascial compartment, same for the adductors and quads, then those compartments would be wrapped in the outermost layer of fascia of the thigh. You can get a sense of the way the body arranges things like that in the lamb shank photo below.